PRS-650 Good old Sony reader!

[Iskariot]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I have both a 650 and a 350, and while overall I agree, I have regular problems with the battery draining too quickly with both of them.

Fizzywater,

There seems to be a very easy replacement battery kit available for the 350 and the 650. I watched a youtube video and it seems very easy to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feRYVQz2FMo

To my dismay there is no such kit for the 950, or I would have bought two to keep my 950 running for several years.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by Iskariot

Fizzywater,

There seems to be a very easy replacement battery kit available for the 350 and the 650. I watched a youtube video and it seems very easy to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feRYVQz2FMo

To my dismay there is no such kit for the 950, or I would have bought two to keep my 950 running for several years.

Thanks for the tip! I would like to pick up a kit for my 350 at some point.

[Iskariot]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

(...) although the Kindle Paperwhite is tempting me, as I have long thought that t would be nice to have a Kindle as a backup ebook reader, so that I could get the best of both worlds. I would also appreciate the higher resolution screen.

Kindle only tempted me in the early days of e-reading, when I did not yet understand the hostage scheme Amazon uses. I despise their refusal to enable the Kindle for reading the internationally accepted ePUB format.
As far as I am concerned they could still keep using their special restricted MOBI versions for their own merchandise (I would never buy it anyway), but at the same time offer ePUB for those who refuse to take the Amazon bait, and for those who live in countries where local ebooks are mainly or even exclusively distributed as ePUBS.

The mere thought of being enslaved to one ereader brand for the rest of my life because they hold my books hostage is totally unacceptable.
I also refuse to buy any kind of DRM-infested book. The books I buy are mine and I read them on any e-reading devise I see fit. In the last six months I have bought 23 books, none of them with DRM.
I know of course that you can convert ebooks and rip DRM, but I feel very strongly that when I pay for a book I should not have to jump through hoops to be able to read it on the device of my choise.

So Kindle is out of the question for me. I exclusively buy open ereader platforms, or whatever it is called in English.

[trocchietto]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

I just wanted to say that while Sony has really screwed themselves when it comes to the e-reader sector it has had nothing to do with the quality of their hardware. I've been browsing the Kobo and Kindle forums and the number of complaints regarding the quality of the hardware has been astounding. I've had my 650 for getting close to two years now and while it does lack a light I have never ever had a freeze, or a spontaneous reboot or a problem with the battery draining overnight or slowdowns with a lot of books or anything like that! It's unfortunate that Sony never had the vision to back up their great hardware. To me their bookstore is a desolate desert and their yearly reader revisions (although great quality wise) always seem designed to fight the last war rather than the next one so to speak.
I think that my 650 is still good enough for me to wait at least another product release before jumping in and getting a new reader.
(by the way I use the PRS+ custom software and that also makes all the difference in the world).

Always being a nostalgic but sorry I do not agree. T1 vs T2 is to question, but 650 vs T2 no way
T2 is like reading a book super white, the 650 grey background only worth to buy a T2 for one buck.
Also... on 650 I could not highlight, after a while the device was becoming really slow with bookmarks and notes, the T2 is really fast.
More it has internet(readable under the sun with teethering), and you can chose and order download your books on the go with kobobooks, the sony store or what you like.

also e-reader means electronic reader... making the reading experience electronic, not add necessarly light, because I never read a paper book in the dark. ok innovation is super, but so far any reader in the world complained because could not read without an hard copy of a book without an inbuilted lamp. Sorry everybody in the world is fetish about ereaders, they always say oh the pleasure to touch the paper is amazing, i could never substitute(please who do not know someone said that?) so what is the problem, for century the light was not essential, I can bring a clip, a candle, now it looks that we cannot survive without an inbuilt light to read.....

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by trocchietto

...but 650 vs T2 no way
T2 is like reading a book super white, the 650 grey background only worth to buy a T2 for one buck...

Remember there are differences in screen background color even between the same reader. One of my 350s has a noticeably brighter background to it and better contrast because of it (that's not to say that reading on the slightly darker one is any struggle or any less enjoyable, it's still a very good screen to read from without any issues). But I've put my brighter 350 against store demos of the T1 and T2 and there isn't much difference at all in background color. And the 350, because of the slightly higher dpi, and with PRS+ installed and my better fonts, always has better contrast and easier to read fonts. Even with over 1000 books on my readers, they haven't slowed down for me like some have issues, it's still fast page turns (but I suspect those slow downs happen more because of badly formatted ebooks).

Some of us could care less about internet access. I don't have it on the 350 and that's fine by me, I only use it to read, I don't even want a browser on my readers. Even if I had a reader with wifi, I'd still prefer to load my books through Calibre to keep another copy of the book safely available and formatted the way I like to read it.

So for myself at least, the T1 and T2 have nothing over my 350s.

Plus I absolutely hate that curved bottom on the readers, so much so that even if Sony came out with a glow light, it would stop me from buying it.

[Iskariot]

Originally Posted by trocchietto

Always being a nostalgic but sorry I do not agree. T1 vs T2 is to question, but 650 vs T2 no way

I think everybody agrees that the T1 and T2 feature certain evolutionary improvements.
But for particular 350, 650 and 950 users, like me, many things went the wrong way.
I consider the 7" screen of my 950 a very big plus. Also the aluminum casing is by far superior to what the T's have to offer. Another incomprehensible stupid devolution is the loss of the internal silo for the stylus. And the T2 also completely lost its audio capabilities. For me these things count. Some things are more important to me than others but in general this does not look good to me at all.

I do agree that the battery life of the T2 is a huge improvement and the screen seems to display better, also the software has improved etc..

But in general Sony does not keep up. They just released a rather superfluous T2 model that already lags behind what the competition is doing, but more importantly in many respects also lags behind what Sony itself was doing with earlier models like my 950.
I believe the T2 should have been skipped and Sony should have invested in a competitive new model. Perhaps they should not have been trying to compete price-wise, because it is obvious they have lost that battle already. They should try to compete with an advanced luxury model. I would love to buy a deluxe ereader that looks like my 950, but is improved in every other respect. I already described it elsewhere: A 950 with faster 1GHz processor, glowlight, highres next gen screen, more internal memory, improved software, replaceable batteries and stuff like that.

I think many loyal Sony users will be looking elsewhere for their next reader and when, or better... if Sony catches up they might have lost a generation of 350, 650, 950 owners who, by then, will have bought some of the faster, more innovative models of the competition.

I want to buy a new reader in the next few month's. And I would have to be mad to buy a Sony T2 that is frozen in time for 140 euro's instead of one of the much more advanced competitor models that cost the same or even less.

Sony could prevent me from buying another brand reader if they announced in the next few weeks some kind of real up to date new model. I would be prepared to wait several months for such a model, but I do not believe we will hear from Sony again until summer 2013. By then I will have switched to another brand. Sony's superb selection of dictionaries will not be able to hold my attention indefinitely.